@mijostyn
you can not uncouple effective mass. If it is attached to the tonearm the tonearm must move it.
I said the ET2 has a counterweight that is decoupled in the horizontal plain, I did not say "the effective mass" is decoupled.
Now looking at your air bearing arm, the vertical effective mass is quite similar to a pivoted arm.
If the arm weights 150 gm then the effective mass in the horizontal direction is 150 gm. If a pivoted arm weights 150 grams the effective mass would only be perhaps 20 gm.
Your comments on the effective mass of the ET2 are way off base. What you fail to understand is that the total mass of the ET2 armtube, bearing spindle, counterweight beam & weight are substantially less than most conventional pivoted arms - 25-35g in total.
The specifications for effective mass for the Eminent Technology ET2
are as follows -
Horizontal effective mass - 25-35g
Vertical effective mass - 7g
Furthermore on my own ET2 I have a non standard armtube that reduces the horizontal effective mass by another 5g.
I also have modified the decoupling of the counterweight, The standard ET2 uses a leaf spring. I use a teflon V block/knife edge arrangement which allows the cantilevered counterweight to swing freely in the horizontal plain. The V block can be tightened with an allen screw - this allows me to tune the "level of decoupling" to the individual cartridge.
You can add viscous damping but then you increase the work required for the record to move the arm and you increase record wear. This is the problem the Reed 5T and the Schroder LT are
I agree with this - I dont like viscous damping.
However, I have implemented electromagnetic damping on the arm in the horizontal plain which electrically only engages when the bearing spindle is moving sufficiently, specifically eccentric records, to proprotionately dampen the back and forth motion. Interestingly the volume increases with the electromagnetic damping implemented, so the electromagnetic damping is helping the cartridge, not hindering. The Dynavector tonearms also use electromagnetic damping in the horizontal plain.
FYI I also have pivoted arms in use - FR64S/Naim Aro/Dynavector 501 {rebuilt to Baerwald}.
Are there better arms - sure - but as I stated above there is "no best arm" - I personally find cartridge and arm matching and quality of set up as important as the quality of the arm and cartridge to the end result, perhaps even more so. A poorly set up turntable/arm/cartridge, no matter how expensive, is fundamentally destructive to the music.